


the rolling thunder

by rockygetsrolling



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Bounty Hunters, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fantasy, Fictional Languages, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Magic, Meta, Minor Character Death, More tags to be added, Multi, My Own Pantheon Of Gods, Non-Linear Narrative, Platonic Soulmates, Team as Family, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:48:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28961208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rockygetsrolling/pseuds/rockygetsrolling
Summary: three journeys to decide the fate of all they know.a prophecy that looms heavy on the horizon, like a storm at dawn.two lost princes. the blood of the gods spilled. kingdoms on the brink of destruction.a small farm, green and shining. home. life. love, lost and found.OR: a DnD-esque au where the gods live for drama, Phil deserves a vacation, and the world rests on the shoulders of four bothers. co-written and developed with my dear friend rosewitchx.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream & Technoblade (Video Blogging RPF), Jschlatt & Toby Smith | Tubbo, Wilbur Soot & Technoblade & TommyInnit & Phil Watson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26
Collections: Golden Sons AU (DSMP)





	1. oh, hallelujah, may the dawn reach your eyes again

**Author's Note:**

> fucking FINALLY 
> 
> i have had this sitting in my gdocs for ages, but alas, she rears her head!
> 
> my lovely friend rosewitchx and i have been developing and worldbuilding this au forever now, and i'm really excited to put something out there. i hope you guys enjoy, and please check out her companion piece "the lighting strike", you won't regret it.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> technoblade and dream, two best friends, fall apart and rebuild.

The tavern is loud and warm, everything they need after a job, but Dream can’t help but feel uncomfortable despite everything. 

It might be the nature of the job, he tries to tell himself--it’s not often they get called for an interrogation. It might be the weird way the soldiers dropped like flies under his new arrows--needle-sharp and near silent. It might even be the heat of the summer night, the humidity hanging over his head like a blanket. 

But Dream knows that’s not the case, and he hates that he knows what’s really making him squirm in his seat.

Technoblade sits across from him at their table, his axe across the diameter of it alongside Dream’s sword. It’s a gesture of peacecomings to the others in the tavern, but the dried blood still clinging to Techno’s hands and the blade itself speak volumes about where they’ve been. Dream had tried to get Techno to wash the blood off before they had come here, but Techno had been either unable or unwilling to listen, and Dream had given up the ghost when he recognized the haunted look on Techno’s face for what it was. 

So here they are: a tavern in the middle of a province in Justea, plates overloaded with as much food as possible after their job well done. While Dream has sufficiently tucked into his with the usual appetite of a seventeen-year-old, however, Techno’s remains untouched. It’s become a trend--Techno orders food, doesn’t eat it, gives it to someone else for free, and then leaves on an empty stomach. It’s no way of life for anyone, least of all a bounty hunter, but Techno sits silent and still, staring at his laden plate.

Dream doesn’t understand. It’s one of his favorite dishes--steak and potatoes smothered in gravy and mushrooms--and it lies untouched. Techno stares blankly, his red eyes dark and empty, and Dream feels his heart fracture a bit (it’s not just the pain in his ribs, it’s not).

“Techno.”

  
  
“Hm.”

“You should eat. That was a hard job, you earned it.”

Techno laughs--dry, sardonic, no humor at all. “That job wasn’t hard, Dream. The hardest part was actually getting it. Everything else was easy.”

Dream winces a bit. “Maybe, but you still deserve to eat.” A risky question comes up in his head, and after a moment’s hesitation he asks it. “Techno, are you okay?”

His answer is a flurry of movement--the hefting of the axe, the roll of Techno’s body as he rises from his seat, and his footsteps leaving Dream at an empty table. It takes Dream a second to get up and follow him, but he does, his sword clanging messily and his cutlery clattering to the floor as he hastily apologizes. 

“Sorry, excuse me, sorry ma’am, pardon me--Techno! Techno wait!”   
  


He breaks through the crowd of people and out into the yard in front of the tavern, where Techno is already walking towards the woods just down the road, but Dream sprints to catch up with him. He’s not called The Runner for nothing, and when he gets up to Techno he grabs one of his wrists in both of his hands. It’s kinda funny, Techno is only a few inches taller than him, if you disregard his horns, but he still feels so much larger. There’s a presence about him that Dream can’t quite emanate, no matter how hard he tries. Perhaps it’s the bloodline--half dragonborn, half orc, compared to Dream, a half-elf--but something about it still feels too heavy to totally comprehend.

“Techno--”

“Go away.”

“Techno, come on, I just want you to talk to me for a moment, I just wanna help you.” 

Dream knows how to kill better than anyone he’s ever met. It’s in his blood, in his head, in the pounding motion of his feet against the dirt and the calluses of his hands. Killing is what he’s good at.

Oh, the effort it takes to take Techno’s wrist (too skinny for a creature like him, too narrow to be full-boned and reared for battle) and to simply hold it; don’t squeeze, don’t bruise, simply hold like an old friend.

“Technoblade?”

And Techno is a killer too, and killers never let themselves get too close—they always pull away.

”It shouldn’t be a burden to talk to me,” Dream says, and his chest hurts as he says it. “You’re my friend, all I want to do is help you.”

(Dream thinks about the violent look on Techno’s face as he cut down the guards with his axe, the vicious bite of a smile stuck on his face, his tusks red with blood and rage. Dream thinks about the threats that poured from Techno’s lips to their victim-- _ i’ll kill you so slowly you’ll forget what being alive ever felt like, i’ll tear your heart out right here and eat it raw and set a fire to bathe in your blood-- _ and remembers how scary it was, that finding his dearest friend past those words was almost impossible for almost a whole day. Dream thinks about gods who crave nothing but sacrifice, about the way Techno has wasted away these past few months. Dream thinks about funerals. Dream stops thinking.)

“You can help me by leaving me alone,” Techno says bluntly. He’s never been one to sugarcoat or exaggerate (or at least Dream had thought so).

“Techno, come on back inside, it’s gonna rain soon.” Dream knows he sounds desperate even as Techno pulls his arm away, almost roughly, leaving a weird liminal space between Dream’s hands. “Technoblade—“

“If it rains it rains,” Techno says, and he walks away from the front of the tavern without looking back, but he does pause once at the edge of the woods just as the first raindrops fall.

“You’ll be better off without me.”

And Dream knows that means  _ don’t follow me, or I’ll hurt you, too _ .

“Don’t go where I can’t follow,” Dream says, still on the edge of the road. The rain is getting heavier, soaking his shoulders and hair. 

“We’ll see.”

And Techno walks into the woods, alone and silent as if he were a ghost, and Dream watches him go with his heart feeling like a bag of gold forgotten at the bottom of the ocean. 

“HEY!” Someone yells from the tavern. “ARE YOU GONNA PAY FOR YOUR FOOD OR WHAT?!”

Dream hesitates before he runs back to the tavern, feeling like the world is empty now, and he pays for their dinner before he gives Techno’s untouched plate to the next beggar that comes along. 

That night, as he’s bedding down at the inn down the road, he checks his bag, and finds two bags of gold. His heart sinks--Techno left his winnings with him. 

Some small, empty part of Dream whispers a horrible, horrible prediction to him:  _ he’s looking to be left alone to die. That’s the last time you’ll ever see him, and you couldn’t have fought harder? Idiot. You’ll lose him now. Good job failing at being a good friend. _

No, Dream rationalizes with himself, Techno gave this to him as a gift of thanks--he’s done it before. Techno wouldn’t do something to himself, he would keep pushing until the end. Dream knows him better than anyone else, Techno would trust him, right? 

He falls asleep on his back, tired and feeling empty in a way he can’t quite verbalize. Conquest hums gentle comforts at his temples, but the bronzen drip of their words does little to steady him.

The dawn rises again, rosy and orange against the grey thunderclouds that loom on the horizon, and Dream keeps moving south. Techno’s gold is heavy in his bag, his heart is in his boots, his hair in his wet eyes behind his mask.

He prays to the gods that he didn’t make the wrong choice. Conquest, for their part, does not answer him.

=

The summer passes into fall, the fall into winter. The cycle of life goes on. 

Dream sends letters every week. He never gets one back, which means Techno isn’t getting them, because Techno might slip up a memory or reminder, but he always remembers it eventually. No, Techno’s gone quiet on purpose, and Dream lives constantly in fear that he’s lost him forever, but he holds onto hope as much as he can. He prays to Conquest, asks for their knowledge, but the god remains silent--whether out of genuine ignorance or an effort to spare Dream the truth, he doesn't know for sure. But he presses on through his travels, in an effort to make his tribe proud. 

At the height of the January winds, biting and brutal, Dream meets a dragonborn barbarian at a tavern in the Badlands--brave, honest, and roaringly funny--and in a moment of weakness he asks him to travel with him. They’re both hunters, or at the very least they both were at some point, and Sapnap holds an air of gentle humor that Dream didn’t realize he was missing. It reminds him of easier times, ones that make him ache for his home. 

In the early spring, chilly March rains beating down on the slopes of Newfoundland’s mountains, Dream and Sapnap find a wandering artificer, one who thinks deeply and smiles with reservation and speaks with meaning and deliberacy of marvels that the other two cannot even imagine. Dream remembers another time when someone spoke prose that he barely understood and made it sound like home, and George ends up following them, too. 

The world is a great banquet, all her treasures laid bare for them, and the Dream Team makes their way across the continent towards the Wilds for the Festival of the Hunt. 

Dream has never been good alone, and he has companions now, but his chest still hurts in the empty space that Technoblade once held, still holds, may never hold again. 

=

Veer’as is a quiet village laid lush in the basin of Turvell Valley, a simple farming town with bright fields and shining masonry unlike any other. It’s here that George insists they stop for supplies and maybe a night of entertainment--it’s well-known for the colorful cast of characters that inhabit its boundaries, and it’s been a long time since any of the three of them heard some music that didn’t come from Sapnap’s old and beat-up lute. 

Speak of the devil; as they look down from the ridge just north of the town, Sapnap bursts into song loud enough that a few other travelers along the road turn to stare. 

“OHHHH, SING TO THE HILLS, MY BLIMEY LASS,” he crows, his normally growling voice sweet and melodic now. “MAY THE HILLS FOREVER ROLL WITH YOUR NAAAME--”

“Oh, gods, don’t do this right now,” George says, pulling his goggles over his eyes as if it’ll keep people from looking. “The last thing we need is a bad reputation before we even get to town.”

“Come  _ on _ , dude,” Sapnap says, pulling out his lute. “What are they gonna do, turn us away and lose money? Dream, sing with me.” 

“Oh, no,” George groans, and Dream tosses an arm around Sapnap’s shoulders as he sings too.

“GOODBYE, GOODBYE, MY SWEETEST DARLIN’,” they sing-shout, half laughing as George groans and pulls his hood over his head in embarrassment. “OHHHHH HALLELUJAH, MAY THE DAWN REACH YOUR EYES AGAIN--”

A few fellow travelers who have more musical skill join in, a few clapping to keep a beat, and Dream remembers why he likes travelling so much. It’s not about the jobs he picks up or the gold he earns, it’s the people.

It’s always the people. 

=

The town square is bustling and loud and very, very human. 

Children run between the feet of straggling adults, screaming and laughing as they play. Merchants crow praise for their goods, and farmers ring bells as they announce auctions for the best cuts of meat and bushels of vegetables and herbs. Washing women surround the fountain in the center of the square, where young girls sit in the green offering hand-woven flower crowns for low fees for spending money. Dancers and singers gather around the gazebo in the northeast corner, where crowds listen and clap and sing. The whole place smells of grass and good food and life, and Dream revels in it. 

George is bartering with a glassmaker for new potion bottles with Sapnap standing rather resolutely behind him, and Dream himself is perched on one of the many large rocks propped up as a playplace for children, smiling as he watches George and Sapnap argue with differing levels of success. He never gets involved in bartering in towns and villages--usually, in places like this, people have to work hard for goods to be worth the money, nothing like the con men and thieves of the cities. A blacksmith from a hamlet in the middle of nowhere can make a better set of tools in half the time that a city one could.

He turns and looks out at the crowd of people, watching it go by like it probably does every day, and for a moment he loses himself in the density of life around him. It goes on, despite how many hearts he stops and necks he snaps during the night shift.

A figure catches his eye, and he turns to look, and his heart skids to a stop in his chest.

Just to the left of him is a silhouette that’s far too familiar to be a coincidence. Dream would know such a stature anywhere. The rosewood hair, the spiraling spined horns, the outsized ears--well-trained for catching the slightest sound. The shoulders are broader, the spine stretched taller, but Dream knows. Since that first night in the woods almost ten years ago ,  he’s known what a best friend looks like.

“TECHNOBLADE!” 

Dream leaps to his feet, his hands stretching over his head as he shouts. A few people turn and stare, including George and Sapnap, but Dream doesn’t care.

“TECHNO! TECHNO, OVER HERE!”   
  


The head turns, the red eyes register and widen, and then the smile comes. Broad and gentle and unbelievably real, and it’s been so long since Dream saw that smile. 

He leaps from the rock and charges Techno full speed, and Techno just opens his arms to him and scoops him up like he always has, like he has since they were kids. His arms feel like home, and the heart that beats in his chest sounds even stronger than before, it sounds like a war drum, like a forest fire. 

“You’re alive,” Dream says, his voice breaking as he nestles his face into Techno’s shoulder, his arms around his neck. His feet aren’t touching the ground. “You’re okay.” 

Techno squeezes him tighter and leans over a bit, and Dream squeezes his sides with his legs to hold on as Techno bends over at the waist just  _ clinging _ like the world will end if they let go of each other. Dream feels safe in a way he hasn’t in months, feels like he could conquer the whole world on Techno’s shoulders, but that’s after he stops crying with relief, because Techno is  _ alive _ , he’s okay, he’s  _ here _ . 

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out. “I shouldn’t have let you--”

“Don’t be sorry for the choices I made,” Techno says, and Dream hears the catch in his voice. “You got me. We got each other. It’s okay.”

And it is, now. Everything is okay as long as you have your best friend at your side. 

And they hold each other right there in the middle of the crowded market square, because the world doesn’t matter right now. Life pounds and surges under Dream’s palms, life that breathes and laughs and loves and exists in Dream’s chest always, life is here. 

“Gods, I missed you so fucking much.”

= 

“Is he okay?” Sapnap asks George, his thorny brows upturned in confusion.

“I have no idea,” George replies, because he really doesn’t have any idea. Dream is an affectionate guy, sure, but this is something else.

The guy he’s hugging looks like he could toss a tree a decent distance without much effort--he’s easily seven feet tall and built like a brick wall. His skin is a strange, almost unnatural shade of pink, his hair color the color of bark, his face studded with horns. He’s dressed like a farmer with the mud-stained boots to match, and his hands and arms are scarred and studded with scales. 

And Dream is clinging to him like he’s wreckage in a storm at sea.

“Who do you think he is?” Sapnap asks. 

“I don’t know,” George says. “Maybe this is the friend he keeps talking about.”

They stand quiet, watching them gently pull away only for Dream to pull his mask down just enough to expose his forehead and press it to the other man’s--the deepest gesture of trust to Dream’s tribe. 

“They’re either secretly married or best friends,” Sapnap deadpans, and George steps on his foot rather hard. “Ow, dude.”

“Shut up.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fucking FINALLY 
> 
> i have had this sitting in my gdocs for ages, but alas, she rears her head!
> 
> my lovely friend rosewitchx and i have been developing and worldbuilding this au forever now, and i'm really excited to put something out there. i hope you guys enjoy, and please check out her companion piece "the lighting strike", you won't regret it. 
> 
> thanks for reading!!


	2. the ballad of phil watson; canto i

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the beginning of phil's story.

i. father of mine 

Phil remembers learning to fly.

He remembers the wind in his hair—more like head feathers, really, but hair was always easier to say—and the chill of the wind in the midst of the fall. He remembers the tentative steps he took to the edge of the outcropping over the woods, the way rocks fell and clattered down the cliff side beneath his freshly twelve year old talons.

“Don’t be scared,” his father said beside him. His father, Ikki, the son of Clan Sh’thalow, the best scout on the Kryan Mountains. His father, his hero. “It will come with time. Should you fall, I will be here to catch you.” 

Phil stared down the cliff, his heart in his throat. His wings were finally mature enough, and he should have been brave enough to jump and take flight—he’d been up there before, and he’d never been scared of heights. But in the moment his stomach felt like a rock, and the wind felt like an enemy.

“ _ Shie’se _ ,” Ikki said gently, reaching over to pull his boy’s hair away from his eyes. It was always coming undone from his ponytail, and he patiently tied it back again. “We have time to do this another day.”

“No,” Phil said, despite the waver in his voice. “I can do this. You promised you’d be there to catch me.”

“That I did.”

Phil looked down, and then back up at his father. “I’m going to jump.”

“Glide first, and then take flight. I know you can.”

Phil nodded, and then with a deep breath, he jumped. 

His wings spread, and they caught the wind shrieking up the cliff. He wobbled precariously in the air for a moment, struggling to find the right angle, but then he was sloping in a slow arc down, and he soared like he had always imagined he could. 

Phil howled gleefully as he rose on the wind, his wings beating in time as his father had taught him, and behind him he heard the familiar whistle as Ikki took flight. He looked to his left, where his teacher floated almost effortlessly beside him, his owl eyes honey bright, joyous for his son. 

“That’s it!” Ikki shouted, angling down to waft the current upwards. “Focus on the forward motion! You’re doing splendid!”

Phil shut his eyes and let himself get lost in the motion for a moment, the gentle up and down of his wings and the wind in his hair, the startling lovely sense of utter freedom. 

A pair of hands took his, and he opened his eyes to look at the hooked beak and bright eyes of his father as he swung him gently in a circle around him, the wind rushing around them in gorgeous arcs and songs, and Phil laughed like he would never stop. 

Evening fell over the valley soon, and they finally came to rest on an outcropping of the tallest peak, the world stretching out below them infinitely. 

“Someday,” Ikki said, a hand in his son’s ruffled hair, “someday,  _ shie _ ’ _ se _ , the world will open its arms to you, and everything will be there to explore, just for you.”

“Everything?”

“Everything,” Ikki stretched a hand out over the void of the air, “will be yours to explore.”

“And you?”

Ikki smiled and tucked Phil’s hair behind his ear, his eyes gentle and full of love. “My place is here in the mountains, to keep Turvell Valley safe. The creatures of the caverns are always waiting for a weakness. But you will never have to worry, so long as I and my scouts watch the skies.”

“I want to be like you, then,” Phil said. “When I’m done exploring everything, I want to save people, like you.” 

Ikki let out a low purr in his chest and pulled Phil into a tight embrace. “You are born to be great, Philip. And you will be. I know it.”

(Seven years later, Phil clutched the lifeless body of his father, fallen in the middle of the woods of Turvell Valley, and wept, for he had not been enough to save him. He had not been great enough to save his own hero, so what did that make him?

Seven years later, Phil watched the Elders of his father’s tribe burn Ikki and send his ashes into the Great Vastness—a warrior’s funeral. Phil did not feel at peace.) 

=

ii. the greatest treasure

“PHILIP! DINNERTIME!”

Phil knew better than to neglect the powerful voice that cried from the hill overlooking the town, and he rushed to gather his shoes and hat from among his playmates’. 

“Where are you going?!” Hank said, the ball still in his hands. “We’re just about to start round seven!”

“I can’t stay,” Phil said, almost tripping over himself as he scurried up the path. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow!”

Up over the crest, a tall woman with golden hair and icy blue eyes surveyed the field where Phil went to play at the end of every week. Her stride was long, but staggering—the prosthetic leg that began just below her knee was to blame. It was made of icy metal and blue wood, stark against her simple brown tunic and trousers. Phil always loved the way his mother stood.

Maya Watson was once a soldier in an old and powerful country where half the year the sun never rose, an empire that had given her up after her injury with a hefty honor and a grand gift of enough gold to keep her living comfortably all her life. But Maya Watson had instead picked up the hammer and nails, the carver and the axe, and had learned something new to sustain her, for she could never stay still too long. She still bore the scars of war, just like Phil’s father (a man she loved deeply, despite their differences and distance), but she had never let them drag her down. 

Now, as her son rushed to meet her, her hard face bloomed into a smile, warm and as familiar as anything. 

“There’s my boy,” she said, stretching an arm towards him, which he immediately nestled himself under. Even at the tender age of fifteen, his mother was the safe haven that he sought when his playmates would rather regale against their parents’ guidance. “How was your day?”

“It was fun,” Phil said, lifting the water bucket that Maya had left for him. “Hank and I went fishing in the creek together, and then Fit and I sparred and Jordan told us that we were both dumb, and then we started playing keep-up and Mister Pete gave us fresh sugar bread!”

Maya smiled, wide and tender. “You work hard for your days off every week,” she says, “and I’m glad you have such good people to spend your days with.” 

Phil nestled into his mother’s side, his feathers catching a bit on her buttons and latches. “Maybe, but I like coming home to you more.”

Maya ruffled his hair. “I love it when you do come home, baby, you make me so proud every day.” She leaned down and kissed his hair, and then took his spare hand to swing it back and forth a bit as they walked up the path to their farm. The path was winding and dusty, but Phil had always loved the way the sun broke through the hazy particles as evening set on the world. 

The farm was a sprawling thing—great and green and beautiful with its bounty. The beetroot fields had been freshly watered and weeded, and the sheep rushed to the fence to greet Phil and Maya as they walked up the path. 

“Fit’s mother gave us some beef and bone from one of their cows,” Maya said as she and Phil set their buckets down in the kitchen. “Perhaps we dry the steaks and make broth from the bone? The marrow will be good on bread in the morning.” 

Phil nodded and rushed to get the beef down from where it was hanging to cut and prepare it properly. “Do you think Da will be coming to visit us soon?”

“I hope so,” Maya said, guiding the boy down gently. “I know you miss your father, but you’ll be spending the winter with him in the mountains. You’ll get your fill of him then.”

“Maybe,” Phil said, bringing the cleaver down on the meat before him with considerable strength, strength that was not quite human. “But I’ll miss you. And Hank and Jordan and Fit.”

Maya dragged her son’s hair back away from his eyes again, taking the tie out to redo his hasty ponytail. “You will. But it’ll be growth for you. You’ll learn to fight, like your father. No matter what you decide to do, it’s good to know how to defend yourself and others.”

Phil’s hands, slick with sweat, fumbled, and he slapped the cleaver down the moment the last hunk was shorn away. “I know. That doesn’t mean it won’t be hard. But—“ he cut Maya off before she could say anything, “—change is hard, and it will hurt, but you’ll come out from her in the end.”

“That’s my brave boy,” Maya said, leaning down and over to kiss her baby’s cheek. “You have the whole world waiting for you, Philip. It’s all a matter of how far you wander.”

“I’ll wander everywhere,” Phil said, “and I’ll find the best and prettiest treasure I can for you.”

“Oh,  _ shie’se _ ,” Maya said, gathering Phil up in her arms and lifting him from the ground, making him shriek with laughter, “you are the best treasure I could have ever asked for.” 

(Six years later, Phil stood over a grave in the pouring rain, clutching his mother’s hat—green and white striped, the one thing she never left home without—and sobbed, cursing the power that took her life away. He couldn’t find her any treasure, no treasure would have saved her from the illness that ravaged her. 

Six years later, Philip Watson’s entire world was gone. His father was ashes in the wind, his mother food for the earth that she tilled. At the age of twenty-one, Philip Watson was alone.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part one of four (?)
> 
> shie'se = aaracokran, roughly translates to "little one." an affectionate term, often used by parents to refer to their children.
> 
> i've been in charge of developing phil's backstory for this story. not even my co-author knows all the bits and pieces i've slipped in here. she will be discovering it with you. 
> 
> i hope you all enjoyed this!!


End file.
